Both sides in Kosovo giving UN envoys macabre misery tour

MALA KRUSA, Serbia -- The long grass was freshly cut and the thin trunks of the plum trees painted white in the orchard where Qamil Shehu cheated death in March 1999.

When 15 ambassadors of the United Nations visit this Kosovo village on Saturday, 71-year-old Shehu plans to tell them how he pulled himself unhurt from under the bodies of almost the entire male population of Mala Krusa.

His will be one of many stories of loss when a delegation from the Security Council tours divided towns and devastated villages before weighing the merits of a Western-backed plan to give independence to the breakaway Serbian province.

The two-day agenda has been crafted to give equal time to the 90-percent Albanian majority and the remaining 100,000 Serbs, stoking a macabre contest over who has suffered most in the southern province.